Category: LifeCategory: Life

Love this from Florencia Ornelas:

“I gave myself the task to sketch as many strangers as possible during my commute to work instead of scrolling and it was a great exercise to get my creative brain working and have something to look forward every day before working 9-10 hours on my laptop.”

If we wait until we’re a full time artist, we might be waiting a long time. Better to start right where we’re at, with what we’ve got, with the time that is available.

We don’t become great in 10 minutes, but we can get a little better 10 minutes at a time.

From “Gen Z’s College Radio Revival:”

“I’m 21. I grew up in the age of algorithms. The way music is right now scares me because of the rise of AI. Not even AI made music (I hate it) but even just ‘Daily Mix, 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 5.’ It’s not made by someone. It’s made by an algorithm. I wish more of that stuff was person curated.”—Mari McLaughlin, WHRW (Binghamton)

“What attracts a lot of people to college radio is the idea of putting somebody on. Showing them a new song they haven’t seen before, outside of the algorithmic nature of streaming.”—Aidan Greenwell, WRFL (Kentucky)

I wrote “A Blackened Death Metal Band Has A College Radio Breakthrough” back in 2023:

“My understanding is, so the college radio stations started playing us and then one of these kids have like, graduated college and then started their own web radio stations. And so then they’re playing us on those, and then other people hear about it, and they’re playing us on their stations. And then some like real legitimate, like the one local radio station here, the Big Rock one has played us multiple times on it, which makes no sense to me.”

College radio will endure because the experience of music is youthful, it is life. I believe this because I see kids in Nirvana shirts, or hear them jamming Pearl Jam covers. Youthful zest isn’t flowing into Spotify, or other streaming music services, it’s a dead scene driving only by increasing profits for shareholders, and absolute race to the bottom. Meanwhile, “the kids” are still picking up guitars, playing with loop stations, setting up house shows.

Streaming music companies don’t stand a chance.

Emailing someone directly puts you on the hook, which makes it scary. But if you’re stuck on what to send, Carly Valancy has some suggestions:

Networking doesn’t have to be gross, and if you’re only doing it to get something, you’re doing it wrong. Bringing more people into your creative orbit can be a gift in itself.

Sean Cannon, from a recent Escape Pod guest appearance.

“All you have to do is just be 5% better than everyone else who’s really bad at it. You don’t have to get everything perfect… you just have to be a little bit better so you can survive the war of attrition.”

You don’t have to our run a bear, you just need to out run your friends.

Solid advice from Manuel Moreale:

If you feel even the slightest of temptations to quit some of those stupid apps and sites, here’s my advice for you: do it. Don’t overthink it. Just delete your account, delete the apps from your phone, and start living a better life without them. And if you miss your friends, do something radical: pick up the phone you likely have in your pocket and give them a call. Or send them a text. Or go meet them in person if you can.

Read more: https://manuelmoreale.com/you-will-not-believe-what-i-just-wrote